[gigatexal]

i do -- higher power consumption leads to more heat and noise and i hate that stuff i find it super distracting.

[Modified3019]

Here's what I did years ago, and will never look back:

1. Get a usb extender and a fiber optic displayport extender.

2. Stick your computer in the garage, run the cables to whatever room and hook up your monitor and peripherals.

3. Enjoy as perfect silence and low heat generation as can be possibly be achieved. (Monitors generate heat and sometimes electrical noise, and mice and keyboards are what they are)

[vluft]

yup. if you are picky about mobo selection, you can also do it all over one fiber thunderbolt cable; I have my desktop rackmounted and could go up to 165ft away for the desk.

[jwells89]

It’s a problem with laptops especially, where massive coolers aren’t a possibility (at least if you want the laptop to be more than just technically “portable”). Even worse, tiny whiny fans are the standard there which means anything with much power at all will have times where its fans are screaming. Really annoying.

[tjoff]

Cooling these CPUs silently is not a problem if you have room for a decent cooler. Which you typically do on a desktop.

[SantiagoElf]

Buy good headphones - Audeze, HiFiMan, Meze :) Btw my cpu is watercooled - very silent, I can barely hear it.

[hu3]

If you don't know how to cool these processors silently, you're not their target audience.

[gigatexal]

All of these approaches are bandaids to a problem of big, fat, inefficient x86 cpus.

I know how to cool CPUs such that they can run under load for days and weeks and be relatively quiet.

The point is: the m series chips get you a crap ton of performance with utter silence. The m2 pro Mac minis — amazing. No fans whatsoever.

[hu3]

Again, if m2 is enough for you, you're not the target audience.

Some professionals have workloads that require more multi core perf (not to mention proper Linux support). And running those dead silent is trivial.